TASCHEN creates visually engaging books. The publisher excels at binding together paper that demonstrated the digital age should never eliminate the desire for the thoughtfully designed and engagingly written physical book.
Information Graphics does just this. Its analysis of graphic design past and present together with its rich selection of images provide a wonderful framework for this visual world that is forever evolving but remains as poignant as ever. On a daily basis... Read More

Art and money have always had a mutually seductive rapport – artists need the patronage of industry, industry the positive kudos this union can bring. And the outcome can often be quite intriguing as is the case with some of the art cars painted by leading names in the world of modern art and commissioned by BMW .
The German marque has a 35-year history of commissioning art cars, dating back to 1975 when racecar driver Hervé Poulain commissioned his friend the American... Read More

Chris Cunningham opened the first Audi City cyberstore in the heart of London today with the premier of his latest work Jaqapparatus 1. Here the London-based artist and filmmaker fuses live performance, robotics, sculpture and music – his two industrial machine creations use powerful lasers to attack, repel, communicate and dance with each other in a surreal mating display. It is a very visual high-tech piece to mark the opening of what is to be a new experience for buying... Read More

The private space is seldom a major topic for an international exhibition, especially one that focuses on the Arab world. ‘Home: Contemporary Architectural Interpretations of the Home in the Arab World’ has set out to do just this.
This intriguing exhibition, intimately curated at the Mosaic Rooms in London, explores the domestic architectural space in the context of the Middle East and North Africa and by doing so raises all sorts of intriguing ideas around Arab identity,... Read More

Designing cars is tricky business. Not only do designers have to comply with strict safety regulations, they are also restricted by company guidelines be it in terms of budget or aesthetics. Which is why college years are the best, and possibly the last ones, for them to explore freely.
At this year’s Royal College of Art graduate vehicle design show students exhibited a number of inspiring ideas. This London post-graduate college provides the zenith in design education... Read More

observations

I attended an art and design foundation course much like the famous Vorkurs run by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, a year-long requirement for all new Bauhaus students before they could progress to study in a specific workshop. In a similar way to how the Bauhauslers ran the famous art school a century ago, mine was a place that taught experimentation and encouraged abstraction, tasking us to find our own unique solutions. And it happened to be the finest year of my formal education. The specialist art school that proceeded, failed entirely to capture my imagination, lacking the free spirit, the magical weirdness of that original school. So, I left my paints, clay, tools and camera, and took up writing.

As the Bauhaus celebrates 100, a series of publications aim to explore just how enduring the legacy of this modest art school founded in 1919 in the quiet town of Weimar. Some are assessing the impact of the Bauhaus post 1933, when the Nazis forced the final school in Berlin to close, as Bauhauslers emigrated to England and America and beyond. Others have re-published some of the original Bauhaus journals and documents. Together they tell a compelling story of the most famous school of design – a place of collective dialogues, progressive ideology, imagination and creative madness.